And of course the ever popular if I turn my back and walk 2 feet away and talk in a normal voice the other person can’t hear me.
I remember before cell phones, a lot of scripts slipping in the detail the one of the two was worried the phone was being tapped, so it was better to talk in person, thus making it reasonable to hold off on revealing whatever it was until the two could meet in person.
As soon as someone said that, you knew the person with the information was going to die.
Two more for the “hasn’t been played straight for years” file:
- Telephone calls where the offscreen caller’s voice sounds like sped-up, high-pitched gibberish.
- If one character whispers at length to another, the whispering will be unintelligible to the audience but exaggeratedly breathy and crisp, and will always include at least one intonation of the syllables “hazz-BAZZ-dah!”
I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve yelled the same thing.
Another I haven’t seen here, but that doesn’t mean it’s not: Doctors or psychologists dating their patients.
Nope, nope, nope, and that is one of the fastest routes to instant license revocation if it happens.
Otherwise known as the classic “Three’s Company Misunderstanding”. I remember once when Jack was helping Chrissy install a new shower curtain:
Chrissy: it won’t fit
Jack: you need to unfold it
Mr Roper, listening outside the bathroom door: ??!?
Have we gotten into moldy old sitcom tropes much yet? Here’s a couple off the top of my head:
- Amnesia from getting hit on the head which isn’t restored until the character gets hit on the head again. Yeah, that’s how serious brain trauma works!
- The evil doppelgänger of a main character appears, assumes their identity, and hijacks ensue. This one wasn’t just sitcoms- it was popular on action dramas as well. I think Little Joe on Bonanza alone had two separate evil doppelgängers take over his identity on different occasions.
Not to alarm you, but how do you know there are less evil doppelgangers in real life?
That’s crazy talk!
On the other hand, my wife does sometimes get mad at me about things I don’t remember doing or saying, so…uh oh
“It was all a dream after all” (see Wizard of Oz, Bobby Ewing in Dallas, etc)
Was it ‘Midway’? I feel like they do a lot of dive bombing and pulling up 10’ off the ground. I think there were even a couple scenes where aircraft skip across the water.
That seems to happen a lot in films. An aircraft in a dive (sometimes uncontrolled) pulls up at the last minute. Often the landing gear or some other part of the aircraft might skip the water or knock an antennae or something off a building (with no deviation in the aircraft’s course).
I’m not a pilot, but I’m pretty sure IRL, if any aircraft strikes something at 200+ mph, it is going to a) damage the aircraft, and b) cause the aircraft to pitch towards whatever it struck. Presumably with disastrous results.
Along a similar line, pitching a helicopter forward to use the main rotor as a blender. This was used in 28 Weeks Later and Planet Terror to dispatch mobs of zombies.
Again, a helicopter’s rapidly moving blades are not meant to be used as a Cuisinart. Pretty sure repeatedly striking them with 200lb zombies would cause them significant damage.
Not to mention the mere act of pitching the helicopter forward so the blades can strike a human-sized target is going to cause it to move forward and down (into the ground) very rapidly.
I’ve just seen another one (in an otherwise satisfyingly convoluted thriller): someone who’s about to go into a building, and doesn’t want to be seen doing so, walks up to the door, opens it - and only then looks round to see if there’s anyone watching.
That happened to me just this morning, when I woke up.
Not always disastrous - it depends, in part, on what part of the airplane comes into contact with a solid object, some bits are more of a problem than others - but yes, it’s probably going to cause some level of damage and possibly effect the course. Depends on mass, speed, etc.
Yeah. The rotors vs. 1 person I could see the helicopter “winning”, but a horde of zombies? Nope.
Ironically, it’s the helicopter part of the trope that is unbelievable and not the zombie part.
All the fucking time, brother, all the fucking time. 
Oddly, someone shared a pic on FB of a large two rotor US chopper, only able to land on a ledge with just it’s front wheels, with the pilot keeping it stable. One of my close friends spent 8 years over in the deserts coming out as a WO4, and I asked him if he could do that? And he said- SOP.
Sorry, but do you mean the doppelgangers are “less evil,” or that there are “fewer of them”? 
And, of course, psychiatrists and psychologists are the only mental healthcare providers in Hollywood. No clinical social workers, no marriage and family therapists, no licensed personal counselors.
My husband is a psychologist and the depiction of psychologists in popular media drives him up the wall. Dual relationships abound, and they’re usually using outmoded forms of therapy.
In an episode of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Becca finds herself seated next her therapist on a plane. The therapist turns to her and says, “Would you like to have a session now?”
Nope!
Oh, I should add that people do have innapropriate relationships with their clients. They shouldn’t, and they can get in a ton of trouble for it, but they do. I know of one therapist who invited a younger man into her home, he became friends with her husband, he started spending regular time with them, going on walks together, and when he killed himself she was a complete mess. I don’t believe she should practice psychology. Some therapists are bonkers.
And psychiatrists conduct 1-hr talk therapy sessions. That hasn’t happened since the early 1970s when some psychiatrists still practiced psychoanalysis a la Freud.
Oh, and one of the most unprofessional shrinks in the history of the profession was Dr. Wilbur as played by Joanne Woodward in Sybil.